Cross Over Resource for ELL and School-age Readers
- May 24
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 3
The NewsInLevels.com website was designed to provide World News for Students of English. My original understanding, or expectation, was that this site was built for adults wanting to learn English as a foreign language. I quickly learned that I could also use it while tutoring my elementary and middle school students who wanted to improve their reading and writing abilities. So, I decided to highlight it here as an excellent crossover resource that benefits English Language Learners (ELL) and English speaking school-age readers.
NewsInLevels.com was designed as a FREE iONLINE site that allows users to pick the reading difficulty level. Each story is written at three levels of reading difficulty.
Level 1 difficulty uses short words and short sentences. It is the easiest reading level on this site.
Level 2 stories are more difficult; they have bigger words and longer sentences.
Level 3 stories are written at the highest reading level on this site; they contain the biggest words and the longest, and most complex sentences.
All articles, regardless of reading level are short (i.e., they fit on one computer screen) and have two or three difficult words highlighted in bold print. The difficult words are defined at the end of the article in which they appear.
News stories are added regularly and include a mix of high profile news stories (e.g., national and international politics, environmental issues) and human interest stories (e.g., a dog with two noses, the construction of the Sagrada Familia). As we always do at CStarsky, I encourage all students to select stories that look interesting to them. They can easily do this by scrolling down a page that shows the full list of stories, starting with the most recent stories. New readers get an idea what the story is about via the picture provided.
My adult students learning English as a foreign language use the site to practice reading and listening while also increasing their vocabulary. English language learners enjoy this site because they can click on a button at the bottom of each story to listen to the story being read. This gives them an opportunity to follow the words on the screen as they are listening. In addition, most Level 3 stories show a video representing key aspects of the story--similar to watching the story being reported on the evening news programs. All students can access this video. Even if they are working alone, all students can get practice reading and listening to English while using this site.
Many of my young students (not ELL) have enjoyed using the NewsInLevels.com site because they can find “grown up” stories that interest them (e.g., environmental or political topics) and fun topics related to their hobbies (e.g., animals, crocheting). I have used the site to have some of my elementary school students practice reading out loud. As more advanced students read the stories they often become inspired to use characters they read about in their own creative writing endeavors, or to do more in depth research on a topic of interest.
In summary, NewsInLevels.com is a good resource for students wanting to learn English whether their learning goals and objectives are focused on learning English as a foreign language, or increasing their English reading, writing, and listening skills. The information is appropriate for students in elementary school through adulthood.
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The English version of NewsInLevels.com is not the only source of news for people wanting to learn English as a foreign language. With a quick online search you will find similar websites for other languages (e.g., French, Spanish).
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